Dartmouth College lies at the nexus of white-bred, good-old-boy institutionalism and straight clownishness. On a single stroll from your dilapidated mansion of a frat house to the new, multi-million dollar dining hall, it is completely normal to pass ten suited econ majors, five girls in multi-colored spandex and wigs, a gorilla chasing a banana and a sorority girl in a penguin suit. Our Outing Club members dye their hair for zany freshman trip rituals each fall, only to re-color it in time for Goldman interviews.

Never has this dichotomy been as apparent as this election cycle’s Republican debate.

I first noticed preparations for the debate over the weekend, when the abundance of old white people on campus shifted from a typical Hanover level (read: so, so many) to a holy-shit-I-can’t-believe-there-are-actually-this-many-old-white-people-around proportion, in the span of just one night. Parking spots disappeared, it became impossible to get into the local coffee shop, and you couldn’t smoke a cigarette outside without getting at least ten disapproving stares. By the time Michele Bachmann’s campaign bus parked in the center of campus to the horror of every crazy old Vermont liberal in proximity, I sensed that things were about to get weird. Come Tuesday afternoon, I wouldn’t be disappointed.

The day is final upon us! Dartmouth, “the conservative Ivy,” is hosting tonight’s Republican debate. And, good lord, are we excited. (By excited, we mean drunk.)

From the looks of the photo at right (courtesy of Lizzie O’Leary), Dartmouth is living up to its reputation as the 12th best college in the nation “for activists.” And what better time than now? The national spotlight is on New Hampshire, and despite whatever The Dartmouth’s staff might say, we’re still pretty sure one student or another will find a creative way to hector the candidates and offend decent Americans everywhere. Go Big Green!

Anyway, we’ll have more on the zoo-like qualities of Dartmouth-on-the-day-of-a-big-debate tomorrow. But in the mean time — so you can get a better idea what to expect from radicals on both side of the aisle this evening — we sent out interview questions to the paragons of both cold-hearted conservatism and lily-livered liberalism at Dartmouth. Read the rest of this entry »

Unconditional Raves

IvyGate has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New York Observer, Newsweek, New Yorker, and other publications, as well as NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Drudge Report, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Wonkette, Jezebel, The Awl, and many more. Most are horrified.